The Legend of Korra

Our Review

The sequel that had the impossible job of following the greatest animated show ever — and became great by refusing to be a copy. Korra is Aang’s opposite: a hot-headed, physical Avatar who punches first and meditates never, dropped into a 1920s-style industrializing world where the spiritual order of the old show is colliding with modernity. Each season is a self-contained arc with a different villain representing a different ideology: equality (Amon), spirituality (Unalaq), anarchy (Zaheer), tyranny (Kuvira).

It was burned by Nickelodeon’s scheduling chaos and budget cuts (season 4’s clip episode is a war wound), but the highs are extraordinary: season 3 is one of the best TV seasons of the 2010s, full stop — Zaheer’s airbender anarchists give the show its scariest and most philosophically coherent threat, and Korra’s season 4 trauma arc (poisoned, wheelchair-bound, PTSD) is a startlingly adult story about recovery. The Korra-Asami ending changed representation in kids’ TV forever.

Verdict: Watch it. Season 1 has wobbles; seasons 3-4 are transcendent.